Transcript

Navy SEAL Mind Techniques That Work - Garrett Unclebach

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 7 min · 15,577 words · 156 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Navy SEAL Mind Techniques That Work - Garrett Unclebach", an episode of The Proven Podcast published September 4, 2025 (1 h 7 min, about 15,577 words). It mentions 47 people, works and ideas, including Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Hell Week, Navy SEAL, visualization, Garrett Uncle.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Navy SEAL, Chris Voss, Garrett Uncle, Hell Week
  2. – 20:00: Hell Week, Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Scripture, Coronado
  3. – 30:00: Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Hell Week
  4. – 40:00: Hell Week, Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Coronado, Frisco, Texas
  5. – 50:00: Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Box breathing, Gates of Fire, Inside Out
  6. – 1:00:00: visualization, Segmentation, Amygdala hijack, General Dwight D. Eisenhower
  7. – 1:06:59: Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Garrett Uncle, George S. Patton, Operation Enduring Freedom

Notable quotes from "Navy SEAL Mind Techniques That Work - Garrett Unclebach"

  • Oh, Charles, I'm honored. Thank you for having me. Appreciate that intro. I was built by a great man. People, a lot of people look at me and they go Oh, you know,.
    about Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles · at
  • The sword because if I do, I'm going to wreck some But in the meime, big fan of Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy. Yes, big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. Period. Sorry. It's arguably…
    about Teddy Roosevelt · at
  • Them. One of the things that I heard all the time growing up, it's two things, right? And I call this the infinite potential unlock. This is what propelled me through the SEAL…
    about Infinite potential unlock · at
  • How do you continue to make it through each one of these evolutions? And how do you make it through hell week? And how do you make it through phase one and phase two and phase…
    about Hell Week · at
  • Beneficial for every audience member. I'm going to talk about two pieces that come from scripture, but you don't have to believe in scripture to see the truth in this, right?…
    about Scripture · at
  • And real estate development, I was doing coaching and speaking specifically around leadership and teamwork. Get to work with people like Oracle today on those topics. And then…
    about Teamwork · at
  • Buds right it helps you get through those moments so breath work is one of them another one is visualization right similar to what I talked about with my own visualization of…
    about visualization · at
  • Passive not listening and really like my podcast co-host Nick who does the impossible life with me one of the first things that like he finds me peculiar and so he finds…
    about The Impossible Life · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles — Person · 12 mentions · first at
  • Garrett Uncle — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    Leadership is about giving orders and expecting results. Today's guest, Garrett Uncle proves that's exactly why most leaders fail. This Navy Seal cracked the code on…
  • Teddy Roosevelt — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Chris Voss — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And one of the examples I give to that is there's an individual named Chris Voss. He's a former head of the FBI's host negotiation team.
  • Mark Twain — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Undertaking. But after you complete that task, to eat an elephant, you do it one bite at a time. Or as Mark Twain said, if you have to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the…
  • General Dwight D. Eisenhower — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Kind of frame my parameter on leadership. John Maxwell says leadership is influence. Eisenhower said that leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it and they want to do it. Right?
  • George S. Patton — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Mission, and it doesn't matter how great their leadership is if we all row together. It was, Patton who said, strategy and tactics, right?
  • Carol Dweck — Person · 1 mention
  • Charlie Keating — Person · 1 mention
  • Father Nick — Person · 1 mention
  • Zig Ziglar — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

  • Scripture — Book · 2 mentions · first at
  • Gates of Fire — Book · 1 mention · first at
    And on the day that it does, you're like a 19-year-old Spartan young man. If you great book I love called Gates of Fire.

Companies & orgs

Products & tech

Concepts & topics

  • visualization — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
  • Segmentation — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    That'll help you step into that attitude. So visualization is one of them. segmentation is another one. So we've we've talked about breath work, we've talked about…
  • Purpose-driven leadership — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Garrett Uncle proves that's exactly why most leaders fail. This Navy Seal cracked the code on purpose-driven leadership, proving that real authority comes from demonstrating both strength and genuine care. The show starts now.
  • Infinite potential unlock — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • Teamwork — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • Men's movement — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Work with people like Oracle today on those topics. And then today I'm also I lead a large men's movement in Frisco, Texas. We have over 400 guys that meet every Saturday. And…
  • Golden handcuffs — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    That certainty of a paycheck. This is why we call them wage slaves or we call them the golden handcuffs because it's a tough thing to do. It's a tough thing to take that leap of faith.
  • Wage slave — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    I want people to have some mercy for themselves if you've had that thought that, you're stuck in the wage slave mode because some of my peers, guys who lead the SEAL teams who…
  • self-control — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    About for me what I think is one of the most important leadership traits, one of the most important self-control traits, right? Is that you can govern your attitude. Your attitude is your response to what happens to you, right?
  • Spartan — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    And on the day that it does, you're like a 19-year-old Spartan young man. If you great book I love called Gates of Fire.
  • Box breathing — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Dad or I can be this type of dad. And he went in and he did what's known as box breathing, which is four in or hold, four and out, four in or it just it's a routine. And he sat…
  • Amygdala hijack — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Is the other. you probably are familiar and your audience is probably somewhat familiar with amygdala hijack, right? When you start experiencing fear, you go into the weakest…
  • Operation Enduring Freedom — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Because of the man that he was. But served at Seal Team 3, died in Operation Enduring Freedom May 3rd, 2016. Can you remember one thing that Charlie told you that first, really…
  • Equanimity — Concept · 1 mention
  • Self-mastery — Concept · 1 mention
  • Servant leadership — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • Coronado — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    I've been to Coronado. I put my feet in the water. I'm Nope. -.
  • Frisco, Texas — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Those topics. And then today I'm also I lead a large men's movement in Frisco, Texas. We have over 400 guys that meet every Saturday. And today I'm also involved in a defense…

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone thinks leadership is about giving orders and expecting results. Today's guest, Garrett Uncle proves that's exactly why most leaders fail. This Navy Seal cracked the code on purpose-driven leadership, proving that real authority comes from demonstrating both strength and genuine care. The show starts now.

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. I am really excited about this one. This is an individual who's coming on who builds men and he talks about purpose and can really change your life and has done things that I could only dream of. So, first and foremost, welcome to the show.

Oh, Charles, I'm honored. Thank you for having me. Appreciate that uh that intro. Um, you know, I was built by a great man. People, a lot of people look at me and they go like, "Oh, you know, Navy Seal. Wow." Right? That's so impressive. And one of the first things I like to remind people of whether it's on a podcast or I'm in front of a small audience or a large audience and I'll tell them I said, "Look, the things that you think of me as a Navy Seal has nothing to do with me, right? Yes, I I did go through their program of of course, but the reputation that the SEALs have, they had it before I ever got there, right? And all I get to do is help uphold that. I get to be a part of it. Really, what you think of Navy Seals, I didn't make that reputation, but I do get to walk in it. And I and I take that as a it's a weight. One of my instructors early on, you know, uh in SEAL training, he pulled me to the side, pulled a few

of us to the side, and one of the things they would always start kind of all of these like mentorship talks with is they would preface with in the unlikely event you make it through training because they're talking, which is like a great way to start every conversation, but they would say, "In the unlikely event that you make it through training, and then they'll give you some wisdom, right? Wisdom for the SEAL teams." And he said, "For the rest of your life, this will be a curse, right? That you that you're a sealed." And he didn't mean that in like a negative way. A curse usually like implies a negative thing. What he meant what he meant was you'll carry this for the rest of your life. And wherever you go, people will compare themselves to you. People will count it as a great victory if they can just beat you in a game of pingpong. Um, I say that to say I know where I've come from and I know what's built me. Um, the

SEAL teams helped built me and having a great father in my life who spoke into me, who cared for me, who was consistent, who took me everywhere that he went, uh, has helped shaped me into who I am. And so, one of the things I'm so passionate about is helping men become not just men, but be great men. I got the opportunity to do that, mentoring students going into the SEAL program, and now that I do that with guys today, helping them deploy into life in their greatest capacity.

I love that you you bring that humility as your forefront. You know, we talked about, you know, when we talked about prior league because whenever we connect with people, we always have an intro call and we talk and I think you and I had one of the longer calls I had and I remember we we chatted about um you know, being the last person to pick up the sword. That is like, listen, I don't I don't want to fight. And every person I've ever known who's an operator um who's ever served is always like, "Listen, please do everything possible.

Do everything possible so you don't send me my my brothers. Don't make me pick up the sword because if I do, I'm going to wreck some But in the meime,

big fan of Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy." Yes, big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. Period. Sorry. It's arguably my favorite president. It's between him and Lincoln. But one of the things that that helps you do that and we talked about a lot was purpose. And I think you define purpose in a way and you do it really well on your podcast as well. You talk about purpose in a way that is different than what I've heard other people do this. And these are things and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was the fact that these aren't ideas. These aren't concepts. These have been proven where nothing else matters.

And you know, one of the examples I give to that is there's an individual named Chris Voss. He's a former head of the FBI's host negotiation team.

Yeah. And Chris is a great guy. And we talked about negotiation and I was learning negotiation at the time at Harvard. And I was learning negotiating at the same time from Chris

and I was like, I'm going to go with Chris. And I remember the professor was like, why are you refuting what I'm talking about? And I was like, well, if your negotiation tactics don't work where they were born, maybe I don't get 5% on the deal. Maybe I'm I'm off. if his don't work, someone dies. So, I'm gonna go with that. So, a lot of what you were taught has been proven where if this doesn't work, someone doesn't come home,

right? So, having these this proven way of doing things, especially when it talks of purpose, is huge and it's one of the major reasons I want to bring you on. So, if you could could you kind of describe how you entail purpose and where it comes from?

Yes. Well, one of the things that's going to have a big influence, you know, I I love this understanding that we're both a physical and a spiritual creature. And you know, if you haven't experienced that in your life, you're there's an encounter coming for you where you'll begin to figure that out where we're more than just uh a piece of flesh. And so that's something that you have to wrestle with. And and people put different terms and different meanings and different beliefs behind that. But your beliefs are going to shape your life greatly. And there's a there's a nature there's a part of the world that we can put clear terms on that we can call science that we can call fact. And there's also things that we can't really explain. We still struggle to explain how the brain works. we still still struggle to fully explain how gravity works. So, there's things that we know and there's things that we don't. And

what you believe about the things that you can't call certain is going to have a massive impact on your life. Uh my personal definition for beliefs is the things that you know are true but can't prove, right? And I mean prove in a scientific sense, right? Verifiable, demonstrable, repeatable. Um there's things that you can scientifically prove and there's things that you can't scientifically prove. I I would say one of them is some people believe themselves to be lucky, right? And this is beliefs inform your your perspective and perspective is going to shape your life. You may believe yourself to be lucky. You may not believe yourself to be lucky. There's some evidence that you can put around that. Um but you can't necessarily frame it specifically. And for my own life, one of the beliefs that I've had, and this is something that my parents said to me all the time as a little kid, you know, and this is just a

great little nugget for you if you have kids, is you have a great ability to influence them by the things that you repeatedly say. I can go back and look at my dad. I can look at some coaches, some men who helped shape my life, and I can kind of like put them in a box of five or 10 quotes that they said all the time. And so, if you have little kids, you know, there were things that my dad said when I was 5 years old, and it didn't mean anything to a 5-year-old. I couldn't comprehend the sentence he was telling me. But he said the same thing from when I was five until I was 25. And when I was 25, thinking, I've been hearing this for 20 years. I've seen it be consistent in his life, and now it's showing up consistent in mine. It starts to have a little bit more impact. So, one of the great things you can do in your children is plant those seeds in them. One of the things that I heard all the time growing up, it's two things,

right? And I call this the infinite potential unlock. This is what propelled me through the SEAL teams. This is what pushed me into some of the new areas I'm in today. And it's two beliefs, right? Remember, beliefs are things that you know are true, but can't prove. And beliefs are going to shape your life. Number one, belief. My parents would say it to me all the time. They'd say, "God has a plan for your life, right?" Meaning that like I there's a reason that I'm alive. I may not know what it is, but there is a reason. There's something that you're supposed to do.

And that purpose informs like a sense of duty. I like the way uh Charlie Kirk says it. He says there is a God and it's not you. The way I would say it is you have a purpose and the purpose isn't about you, but there is a purpose that you have. And so if you if you kind of grow up thinking that way, it almost sends you on somewhat of the the hero's journey of like, man, there's something that I'm supposed to do. There's a part that I'm supposed to play. There's people that I'm supposed to serve. I don't know what it is, so I should develop myself to prepare for this moment. One of my favorite Abraham Lincoln quotes is, "I will prepare and my time will come." Lincoln knew there was a purpose on his life. He didn't know what it was. He knew he was supposed to be great and so he prepared for it. So that's the first thing my parents would say to me all the time.

You God has a great plan for your life. The second thing they would say to me is you can have anything you want in life if you're willing to pay the price for it. And some people may may not say that's true. I I um I wrote a paper in high school about a quote that shaped my life. Uh Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.

That's a belief." And I wrote my uh I didn't I didn't do well in school because I always ended up arguing with my teachers. And I wrote a paper my senior year in high school about that quote. And my teacher said uh that's not true. And I said, "You're right." It's all I that's all I could say to her. I said, "You're right." Because if you don't believe that, it's not true for you. For me, I accepted that. And I said, "This is true. I can have anything I want in life if I'm willing to pay the price for it." Like Henry Ford says, "I think I can." Right? So, I'm going to go down that road. And when you put those things together that I have purpose and that I have potential, right? You're not owed anything. No one's going to give you anything, but you have potential.

When you know you have purpose and you know you have potential, you become infinitely capable to go out and do what you've been put on the earth to do with the understanding that hey, it's not about me.

I think, you know, it goes back to the idea that there's a bunch of people go out there and what you say matters. And some of us have been given the gift of faith, some of us have not. So, it's always fun to have this conversation where it intertwined with each other. But if I sat down and I said, "Hey, I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight." And then you're trying to go, "Why can't I lose weight?" I'm like, "Well, your belief is that you can't lose weight." If you're like, "I can't stop smoking. I can't stop smoking. I can't stop smoking." If you keep saying that over and over again, your beliefs, as you said multiple times, influence your life. One of the things that is is ridiculously impressive for what I know of your community is the ability to embrace the suck, to somehow push through that. And when you're doing these exercises, especially because the

seals are known for this, and this is a burden, as you said, you carry. So, everyone's like, "How do you do this? How do you continue to make it through each one of these evolutions?" And how do you make it through hell week? And how do you make it through phase one and phase two and phase three when your body has completely given up when it's just it's not you're running on fumes?

I think it's the biggest question I always get because I've done it on a much much smaller level. I will never compare myself to anyone who's ever been an operator, uh, especially for the United States. That is a different evolution of humanity. And I'm I'm just I'm not I haven't that's not me. I ain't got that. But I've done triathlons and I'm just being honest. I don't got that. I I've been to Coronado. I put my feet in the water. I'm like, "Nope. Uh-uh. Let me go back to the hotel."

A lot of people. Yeah. That oh that water is cold and I ice bath almost every day. So in this narrative when you're when you're doing this and you know when I'm so I do triathlons and I understand that after I get off the bike it's purely a mental game at that point and you just play a juggle. You're just juggling around different games and you're doing different things and you're distracting your mind and there are times during the run cuz for anybody who doesn't know triathlons you go swim bike run. That's just it is what it is. The swim fries your upper body, the bike fries your lower body, and then your run is just pure mental at that point. No matter how what the distance is

when you're going to push through that because the ability to have mental mastery is so important

when you're doing that, when you train people and when you've done it yourself, what are some of the tactical ways that you've done it? What are the practical ways that you're going to into this and say, "I need to push through this." How do you handle those mental games?

Yeah, great great question. Uh there's a lot of stuff for us to jump off into that one. wanted to, you know, people ask a all the time. They're asking, "Hey, what's this?" Especially related to SEAL training. You know, people ask me about hard things or or I have a lot of we call them tadpoles, right? You want to become a frog man. It's a colloquialism for a Navy Seal. You want to become a frogman. So, we call these guys tadpoles. Tadpoles want to be frogmen. A lot of tadpoles, they'll ask me, they'll say like, "Man, what's the secret? What's the secret to buds?"

And if you're asking what the secret is, you're asking for the hack. You're asking, "How could it not be hard?" Right? what do I need to do to so that I can do it? Um, and so really this relates to like anything that you'll do hard in life. Most people aren't going to try to go through sealed training, but everyone I know has been put up against something that's very challenging for them. So, let me I will talk through some of the simples and then I will talk through some of like my favorite part and I think some of your favorite part too, Charles is really some of like the philosophy and the thinking behind doing these things.

Well, for one, um, every single person that I saw quit in SEAL, like in hell week, speci specifically in hell week, but more so in SEAL training was that there was a common denominator. I uh, because of the way I grew up and some of the people I grew up around, like I was qu I was questioning, you know, people in my class like, hey, why why are you thinking this way? Like, what's helping you like prepare for this? And they would just are like, what the heck are you talking about? You know, I was qu a lot of these things I studied and questioned as I was going through. But I saw a great common denominator in people who completed training and people who did not. Get through hell week, which is like the hardest part of SEAL training.

Just really quick, like it starts on Sunday, goes all the way till Friday. So you're going to be awake for 5 and 1/2 days. You'll sleep a maximum of 2 hours in that 5 and 1/2 days. You'll run over 200 miles. Most of that with a boat on your head, wearing a full uniform on the beach. It's it's tough, right? Go watch the Buds Class 234 Discovery Channel documentary if you want to see more about that. But anyways, people get through this the hardest week in in military training and you ask them why they made it. How did you do it? How did you get through the toughest week of military training and the people who made it, they'll begin to tell you a story about something that's not them.

Mhm. He'll tell you about his mom. He'll tell you about somebody in his boat crew. I talked about my dad. All of them will begin to tell you some story that's not them.

Okay? Talk to the people who quit. people who quit that all of their answers I could summarize into this statement. I just decided I don't want to do this anymore.

Right? And I think we said it when we were having our previous conversation. You talked about, hey, if anybody comes to you and they ask for the hack, you're like, yeah, you're not going to make it.

Well, and because here's what what you're trying to do, right? Or people will ask how hard is it? And when you're asking how hard is it, you're trying to estimate the difficulty level and then makes an make an approximation that based upon what you say the difficulty level is and based upon how strong I think I am, I need certainty that I could make it through this program, right? If it's hard, you know, just put it on a scale for a second. I know I can do a seven out of 10 difficulty. So, as long as you tell me it's a seven or less, I know I can do it. And when you're trying to estimate how hard it is and you want that the answer to that, you are determining there's a point when which I will quit.

Right. Right. Whether it's getting through pregnancy, whether it's launching a business or it's going through SEAL training, if you predetermine there's a point that it would be so hard I would walk away, there's a high likelihood that you will walk away. The other way to step into difficult things is you say like this is what I went into the program with. I feel like I'm supposed to be here and I know it's possible, right? I'm not Edund Hillary trying to be the first person to climb Everest and wondering, is it even humanly possible?

What I knew prior to me going through SEAL training is that there's a few thousand men who've done this before. So, it can be done. The only question is, am I willing to pay the price? And if you have something that gives you that fuel to say, especially more than yourself, right? Money is, and this is where I I kind of talk about purpose, and we'll transition to that a little bit, is like what is that fuel for you? What's driving you? M Hey, Zig Ziggler said, "Money is not the most important thing, and it's but it's second only to oxygen." You know what money is? Money is important. But there are things that are more important than that. And no one's willing to die for money. And my friend Charlie Keading behind me died May 3rd, 2016. Gave his life for this country and did so with a smile on his face. He didn't do that. and he didn't have a smile about it because of the $400,000 death benefit his brand new

wife was going to receive. He did it because he believed in something that was more important than himself.

And so in the same way, right, if you want to go far in life, if you want to do really difficult things, you've got to attach the journey that you're on to something that's sacrificially meaningful, right? We're all going to die. Most of us won't die from a bullet, but all of us will die for something. You will have lived your life on a journey. And what you have to answer hopefully now and not at the end of your life was my journey a journey worth giving my life to. Right? And and the thing that I don't think anybody's willing to die for is money. I hey we'd all like to make more money but no one's willing to die for that. There are things in life that you would say this is actually a thing that's worth dying for. And so you'll go far in life when you're chasing after purpose. You will limit your ability to go in life when you are either running from pain or running towards pleasure. Right? Both of

those are short loops. But running towards purpose is an infinite path. Correct.

And there's so many of us that are driven by fear. And there's so many driven by I don't want to be in pain or I want and that that's a normal loop especially in our

and you can make a lot of progress that way. Yeah, you absolutely can. But pain I always talk about this before pain won't sustain you. When I when I was pitching as a kid I would listen to Rage Against the Machine and I would sit there and I would vibrate cuz I was 16 years old. listen to Rage Against the Machine vibrating on the mound to throw a ball and it worked out great. And I was like, "Hey, I'm going to use this fuel source to go now take a social studies test." That didn't that didn't work so well. It just it's different different fuel sources and different things. And

I laugh at the saying of breakups make bodybuilders, right? And it's it's true, right? like guys with a girl and they become bodybuilders and I've known a few that they became a bodybuilder and they went three or four years down that journey and then said, "Well, wait, why am I even do I got on this journey cuz I broke up with that girl who has nothing to do with my life anymore. I just gave four years of my life to something that was really just felt good because I was making progress, but this wasn't the journey I wanted to be on."

Correct. And there's a lot of people I know on my side of the world who have become multi-millionaires or even billionaires who are miserable. Absolutely miserable because they were serving something that wasn't their truth in any way, shape, or form. And most people don't know what their truth is because to your point, they're running away from pain,

right? They're running towards pleasure. Whatever it is, whatever that dopamine fix is, be it your little iPad playing video games or stuffing stuff up your nose or drinking or chemical induced, whatever it is, that is going to burn you out and you're going to crash into a wall. no matter which side you're on. So, if someone's sitting there right now going, "Okay, these are two individuals that have a certain level of success and they've worked with individuals who have had an immense amount of success and have done hard things." What are the kind of the tactical steps that you walk through and you say, "Hey, I understand where you are now. You've been through this before because a lot of people come to you. A lot of people come on your podcast and they've done coaching with you and they say, "Okay, I clearly have been spending my entire life running away from pain or running towards pleasure or trying to serve my own needs

and be all about me. I have no clue what my truth is. Um, which I think you know you would call purpose. What my truth is. I really don't know who I am as a whole outside of this person who runs away from pain or whatever it is if they weren't blessed with a parent lottery where you had an amazing father. What do you how do you walk them through that to say, "Okay, I've reached this awareness. How do I do this? How do I start pivoting my life and who I am as a being and pivoting my purpose so that I can start living the rest of my life as the best of my life?" So, um, I'm going to talk about I'm going to answer that question, and I'm not going to answer it maybe the way that you want me to answer it, Charles, but I promise it's it'll be beneficial for for every audience member. I'm going to talk about two pieces that come from scripture, but you don't have to believe in scripture to see the truth in this, right? Because

here's where I think purpose really comes from. The way that the way that I see it is God made us with a purpose. But if you if you are into scripture, you'll be like, "Well, hold on a second. It says I have a purpose, but it doesn't say anywhere in here what mine is. Why isn't he telling me, okay, if I believe in God, why isn't he telling me what my purpose is? Why did he put me in this place and didn't tell me what it is? And that's because really the greatness of life is discovering that. And I don't think scripture or life leaves us blank on what those things are. It's where multiple things that we have come together. And I'll talk about two things that I think will guide you into your purpose. Number one is what's in your heart, right? This is real like the heart is, you know, in a in a biblical sense, the heart is the desire center, right? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Also, the things

that you desire is the type of life that you're going to get, right? If what you care about most is relationships, that's the types of problems you're going to have. Right? Out of the heart flow, the issues of life. If you like those things, you're going to get those kind of problems. If you chase money, you're going to get money problems, right? But whatever kind of things are in your heart, that's one thing that'll guide you. The other thing, I'll come back to that in a second. The other thing that's going to guide you is what's in your hand. What are the resources that you've been given? You may have wanted to be, you know, an NBA player, but if you're 5 foot1, maybe you're supposed to take that desire to be an NBA player and do something else with it. It was a part of where it was taking you, but maybe you didn't get the resources for that. What you and I both know, Charles, is that

life isn't fair, right? Some people get given more than other people. But I think what makes life beautiful is when you realize um it's I'm supposed to play my part. I one of the greatest uh conductors I'm I'm blanking on his name because it's a German name that's hard to remember. And he says someone asked him what's the hardest position to fill in in the orchestra. And he said second chair. He said everybody wants to be number one, but it's hard and and everyone knows who number three and four are. You know you're a number three, but the hardest position to fill is the second chair. And but what what I mean what I'm getting at is I think the greatness in life is finding the place where it's like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. No one else can do what I'm doing. And so I think where that comes from is unique desires in your heart and the things that are in your hand. There's an interesting uh

biblical story where God asked Moses a question. And if God's asking you a question or the universe is asking you a question, it's not because he needs the answer. he's he's knocking on your forehead saying, "Hey, dummy, this question's for you."

So, when it comes to to those questions, I think, you know, people really want to know if they have the gift of faith or not, if they're if they're Judeo-Christian or if they're not in that that ball game. Um, they I think people will regrettably, they're looking for hacks. They're looking for a place to start. Some people are not coming from a place of I want to cheat the system. They're coming from a place of being lost in the wilderness going, you know, I I was educated in a system that is faulty at best is the nicest way I could say it. What are some of the things that someone sits down and say, "Hey, you know, I I'm going to journal this stuff out. I'm going to start climbing this. I'm going to start eating this elephant and which is done one bite at a time." What are some of the the questions that you you ask yourself? And you say, "Okay, well, what is in my heart?" Because, you know, you talked

about it earlier. I'm 6 foot 202 203 and size 13 feet as a white kid. I am not dunking a basketball. It's not happening. I wanted to be an iron man. I've got, you know, 17inch calves. Can't run with those things. It'll blow out my leg. I'll never finish the Iron Man. It just it is what it is. That's what I got. So, when the people come in and say, "Okay, this is the guards I was dealt." Which I think and I think you could you could speak to this. We far underestimate our capacity as human beings. Just we have no idea. I think most people die with a full tank because I never really tap into anything. And even the stuff I've done, I still think I've got a 95% full tank. Even with everything I've accomplished, I barely touched my capacity. So when people are looking at this going, okay, these are my cards, you know, because life's an equation. There's constants and there's variables. I know what my constants are.

I am this. I am this. I am this. I am this. That those I cannot change because those are constants. Everything else is variable. What are some of the ways and the questions when you sit down and you journal or you sit down and you work with your clients and you sit down and you work with the people that you've had the blessing to instruct? What are some of the things? What are the processes that you walk them through in that?

Um, so you just mentioned one of the beliefs that you and I both share, right? You you're saying, "Hey, I got 95% more in the tank." And that's because Charles shares the belief that I do um that I can have anything I want as long as I'm willing to pay the price for it. really that that's what Carol Dwek would call a growth mindset.

And I had a master chief in the Navy who told me all complicated problems are just a bunch of simple problems put together.

Mhm. And but until you get great at the simple problems, complicated problems will always seem complex to you. When you get really great at simple problems, you just go, "Oh, this is problem A, C, and F, and I know how to solve all of those individually. It just looks funky when you put them together." Right? So what the journey that that you and I both go on is us having to decide what one what is it that I want right where if you can't tell me what you want I can't help you get anywhere that you want to go right but if you'll decide this is what I want and I don't really know what I'm capable of but I know I'm willing to pay whatever price is required for me.

Yes that that pivot right there is so important and this I this is why I'm interrupting you. I don't care what people want.

What are you willing to do? Like I want to lose right. Cool. Are you willing to go to the gym three times a day? No. Then I don't want to hear about it anymore.

That Yeah. The coaching question, the the start of a progress is what do you want? But in parenthesis, what do you want that you're willing to pay the price for?

100%. And that goes back to the things that you believe you can have whatever you want if you're willing to pay the price. And I think a lot of people don't understand what it really means to sacrifice and deal with that temporary inconvenience because we ban the word problems in my world. Not allowed to call them problems. They're temporary inconveniences. You'll get through it. But when you go through that, knowing who you are and what your truth is, do I have the capacity in my core, in my being, if I went back when I was 20 years old to do and become what you guys and and what your your brothers did?

Maybe. But it's not my truth in any way. Here's where you'll here's where you'll fail in your journey

is have a transactional and this is you know whether you believe in God or not faith shows up in this because when you have a transactional relationship with success you'll never get there you transactional is I will only do this if I get this back

if this is if this is guaranteed to return to me right when you have a purp when you're going after something that leads you that prepares in you a lifestyle a philosophy a mindset that you would live sacrificially. What you can do is potentially get massive big bet outcomes in your life because you decided whether I win or lose. This is a pursuit worth following, right? And when you'll live in that way, only then will you reach some of these mountain tops that people aspire to. You'll never get to those great places with a transactional mindset. So, you're going to have to say, "This is the thing that I'm willing to give it all to. I hope I win, but even if I lose, this was the right thing for me to pursue.

And it's part of the process. We talk about this all the time. You know, you you've got little ones and I you when your little one was first learning how to walk and it fell down for the fifth time, you're like, "Nope, that's it. I'm just going to put in a wheelchair." Of course not. You actually said, "All right, well, you keep going. Keep going." But our school system says, "Hey, you failed. You are a failure." When we're learning how to walk, we just keep going and going and going and going. As an entrepreneur, as the person I've become in my life, I've had a wall of failures. And the only reason I've succeeded is because I've failed. I cannot succeed my way to success. I can only fail my way to success. Every day I go to the gym, I have fail 100%. I fail.

It's just it is what it is. I try to my mate my my form isn't proper or this isn't I didn't stretch out. It's part of the process is to fail your way to success. And as long as to your point of not being transactional,

it's important. So I always try and get people to identify their truth. For you, I think truth and purpose are very similar for you. I think we're we're using those interchangeably. How do you get people to towards that purpose to to find out what's truly in their heart?

So what purpose when when you get a purpose that's what shifts your perspective, right? Purp purpose and beliefs and truth these things all connect. But eventually it's like right the way that you think turns into the way that you act. And so we okay so we shift some thinking. We've got to shift some action. And let me talk about perspective for a second. Um, really the question of your life is not like what does everyone else see? The question is what do you see? When I was going through SEAL training, I was one of the I was one of only two in my class and are 20 years old. Most people are 24 or 25. I went through at 19. I was also I thought I was an athlete until I met one. Um, then I got there and I was like, "Oh, those are athletes, not me.

I'm not." I was a high school athlete. Bunch of the guys in my class were all NCAA athletes. So where that left me was bottom third of my class athletically, one of the youngest people in the class. So you know what that meant? When we did peer reviews, peer rankings, I was always in the bottom third of my class. I was not as mature as everyone else was. And I had a lot of people tell me from my recruiter getting into the Navy to boot camp to my first instructors to my roommates. They all said, "Uncle Boach, you have no chance here. How did how did you end up in this place?"

And so all throughout my journey, I'm continuing to hear this. Um, but I'm remembering some of the things that my dad said. Now, what they're saying is true. I was bottom third of the class. It's a fact, right? And so they have evidence in their sayings of you don't belong here. I'm I'm relying on some other things that I believe that are also true that maybe they don't see. We get to um we get later on in the program and we're before hell week. We're about to go into hell week. Now, let me back up for just a second. When we had first gotten to San Diego, which is where SEAL training happens, I got to see a class who had just finished hell week, right?

So, it's like you're you're like, man, these are the guys. They did it. And this whole class of guys who just finished hell week, they could they looked like a bunch of zombies. Uh some of them their heads are swollen up. Some of them, you know, their fingers are literally two or three times the size. They can't hardly walk. The inside of their legs and their waist is chafed. Looks like hamburger meat. They're on crutches. They're coughing up blood out of their lungs. They all look like they've been, you know, run over by an 18-wheer and then the 18-wheeler backed up and ran them over again. That's what the whole class looked like. And I remember seeing that for the first time.

This was the thought that I had, Charles. I said, "I'm going to finish this program, but I won't look like that when I do it." And I began to visualize for myself what completing this, what completing hell Week looked like and how I would look when I finished. Not just visualizing success, but visualizing the entire picture. And so fast forward, I've been getting all of this discouragement and now we're on Sunday night. We're about to start hell week and the the guys start asking each other, "Hey, do you think you'll make it? Do you think you'll make it?"

Everyone's asking each other. At this point, I didn't really talk very much cuz when you're not popular, it's best for you to just stay quiet, right? But my my classmates or my my boat crew mates, the guys I'm about to go through hell week, they ask me, "Uncle Boach, what do you think?" I said, "I don't think I'll make it. I know I'll make it." And when we finish next Friday, um, when everyone else is busted and then when we go to med checks on Saturday and people are on crutches and coughing up lungs, I'm going to go for a run by myself on the beach on Saturday. It's what I said to all of my classmates and they're like, "Okay, whatever." Well, fast forward that was that is what happened, right? I completed hell week and then on Saturday I was perfectly fine. I didn't even have any chafe on my body, believe it or not, Charles.

Okay. So, I need to ask you how you did that cuz I for cuz I know what sugar. So for those who don't know sugar cooking, sugar cooking is very simple. Actually, you know what? You're the seal. You explain getting what it means to be sugar cookie.

Yeah. Sugar cook like uh instructors don't really call it that very much, but that is what they say to they did. Instructors say wet and sandy, but that's essentially what a sugar cookie is. They want you the sand in um the sand in Coronado has gold flakes in it. So it kind of turns you into a snicker doodle cookie. Uh what they what they want you to do is get wet completely, not one dry part on your body, and then cover your entire body in sand. Not that there's sand on your clothes, that the instructors say, "I don't want to see your skin or your uniform. If I can see your uniform or I can see skin, you're wrong." Right? So, we get really good at this through lots of repetition.

So, how did you not chafe when they turned every aspect of your body into sandpaper?

I don't have I honestly don't have an answer for that. I have no practical guide for how I didn't chafe. I can just tell you.

I was like, I don't know how you did that. Cuz even on some tries that I've done, I chafe. I'm like, how the hell is he doing that? That was pretty selfish.

I didn't chafe in hell week. And on Saturday after med checks, I went for a run by myself on the beach and I ran down to the rocks in front of and I got, you know, it's about a mile down there to the rocks in front of the Dell from the base. I ran down there and stopped, you know, to sit for a minute, climb up on the rocks in front of the Dell, and I sat there, Charles, and I realized it didn't really matter what anybody else saw. It mattered what I see, right? And so really the one of my favorite stories in the Bible of, you know, this is history of when the Israelites come out, God takes the Israelites out of Egypt, takes them to the edge of the promised land. It's very, it's a great story, right? takes him, hey, I'll bring you out of slavery and I'll bring you to the edge of the place that's your destiny.

It's the promised land. And so through all all of that journey from slavery to the edge of the promised land, God does everything, performs every miracle. But then he says, "Okay, it's time for you to go in the promised land. You go and take it." And what's really interesting is at the beginning of this journey, spies go into the promised land. And then they come back. 10 of the 12 spies gave a report. Hey, the land's beautiful. It's wonderful, but there's giants there, right? I don't know how we could take it. Only two men said, "This is the land. This is for us." And that 10 convinced 600,000 other Israelite men that, "Hey, I don't I don't know how we could take this land." Thus, 40 years of laps in the desert. And so, fast, again, it's a very great it's a great story.

Fast forward 40 years later, the only two men who left Egypt that are still alive are the two spies who had said, "This is our land." And now they're talking to the sons of all the men who left Egypt, who died, who left the slave mindset behind. And they said, "Here's what it's going to take for you to go into the promised land." To be strong and courageous, right? You're going to have to look at your situation and say, "We can do this." It's the question isn't what is the reality. The question is what do you see in your reality?

So your reality has been one side of it's been a seal. You now have transitioned over and you've done other things. You've gotten into business. you become very successful in business. Could you share some of your stuff on on what you've done? I know you've done some amazing speaking as well. Can you share a little bit with the audience of what that looks like?

Yeah. So, um, when I left the military, I worked for I did one job. My dad told me, he says, "You're going to say you're going to you're going to figure out really quickly. You just want to work for yourself." Um, which I did. It was a fantastic journey. Got to help uh do the IT portion of a billion-dollar divevestature. Did that and then transition. I'm about to sign up for round two and I realized I had a lot more value than what they were paying me and I had that conversation with them and I came to the the realization that many entrepreneurs have to come to. It wasn't that they weren't telling me that you're not worth more. What they were saying was that's that they didn't help me understand this. My framing the situation helped me understand this.

They weren't saying I wasn't worth more. They said the role that you're in isn't worth anymore. Right? We only pay the role this much and I can put someone else in the role. They weren't defining my value. They were defining the role's value.

And what I realized was I had greater value than the role. And so what I said was, if I'm this is what I said to myself, if you're worth it, then prove it.

Right. Right. If you're really worth it, you're worth it. So go prove it. And so thus, I went on a entrepreneurial journey. Done a few different things. Started off with a axe throwing uh mobile trailer at the same time as getting into just trying all the things I could try. got into real estate development and construction. Have loved that. Uh at the same time as I was doing construction and real estate development, I was doing coaching and speaking specifically uh around leadership and teamwork. Get to work with people like Oracle today on those topics. And then today I'm also I lead a large uh men's movement in Frisco, Texas. We have over 400 guys that meet every Saturday. And today I'm also involved in a defense tech company uh where we're uh changing what the future looks like in the manufacturing realm.

So you went in you said hey I know my worth and I know my value but you also had a belief system because there's a lot of people who don't want to leave that certainty of a paycheck. This is why we call them wage slaves or we call them the golden handcuffs because it's a tough thing to do. It's a tough thing to take that leap of faith.

But when I sat down and I was taught you're never going to retire. you're never going to have the life you want working for someone else. That was a really hard thing for me to listen to and have.

I want people to have some mercy for themselves if you've had that thought that, you know, you're stuck in the wage slave mode because some of my peers, guys who lead the SEAL teams who were willing to run into machine gunfire,

I've watched them get out and they fall victim to the same thing. Money has a a great level of control on the way that we think. And if you can separate the way that you think from money, you'll free yourself. I had to help some of my peers see this. I'm like, "Dude, you are not afraid to die. You've proven that.

But you're acting like if your bank account hits 0.00 for one second that you will die instantly." I'm like, "Bro, you can lose all of your money. You could lose it all. And I promise your family will still eat. And I promise you'll still be safe cuz I know what type of man you are. you'll figure it out.

And yeah, your worth as a human being isn't dictated by your p your bank account. That's it's not how it works. And there's individuals who believe, hey, I have XYZ balance in my bank account, therefore I'm worth this. And it's it's not it's it's not in any way, shape, or form. So, if it's not true for them that they are this elite oola because they're billionaires, then the opposite must be true as well. Worth has nothing to do with money. Money, I tell people all the time, it's an amplifier. It's very much like alcohol. Mhm.

If you're a really funny guy and you drink a bunch of alcohol, you're probably going to be a really funny guy drinking, you know, when you get drunk. If you're a putt or a schmuck when you drink alcohol before you drink alcohol, you're just going to be a bigger schmuck. Same thing with money.

Makes you more of who you are. Yeah. It just it just it's an amplifier. That's all it is. But getting over that, that fear factor, I I think what I always tell entrepreneurs when they go around and they go, "Well, I'm an entrepreneur." I'm like, "Have you lost your first million yet?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "No, you're not an entrepreneur yet. Don't worry, you will." And then I get into rooms where I've had clients like, "Oh, yeah, wait till you lose your first 8 million or your first 80 million." They were like, "Oh, yeah." And everyone's got these stories where they've lost just immense amount of wealth and it doesn't matter.

It's a bit like having your bicycle stolen. It doesn't matter. You still know how to ride a bike. You'll just get a different bike. Just is what it is. You get smarter through the process. You go and you purchase sustainable companies versus agencies or things of that nature. So you can scale it indefinitely outside of you. And you learn the systems and you learn operations and you learn human behavior. those you learn along the way. You mentioned you worked with Oracle and you teach them leadership skills and you and you go into that environment. What are some of the things that people go, okay, you know, I see his transition. I see how he went from as a kid and then his dad influenced him and then he became a SEAL and he used those that those things and now we're into leadership going, okay, I'm in this role. How do I I'm learning how to lead myself from what everything you told us in the first

half. How do you start leading others? How do you still start showing up authentically to lead them?

Yeah. one, let me talk about one of my favorite uh qualities that it's a team quality, it's leadership quality because you said it. You've got to be able to lead yourself before you can lead other people. Um it's from the Bible. It's also Jordan Peterson, one of his rules for life. Don't tell other people how to manage their household before you learn how to manage your own,

right? It's great rule for anywhere in life. And so if you can't lead yourself, you're not worthy of leading anybody else. And so let me let me talk about like one of the first places that starts. It shows up in many ways. We could talk about fitness. I'll talk about for me what I think is one of the most important leadership uh traits, one of the most important self-control traits, right? Is that you can govern your attitude. Your attitude is your response to what happens to you, right? It's not no one assigns it. No one makes you act a certain way. People will say that you're making me angry. Right. My my daughter, she's four years old and she loves the she loves the Inside Out TV show with all the different characters of I don't know if you know that show with Joy and Anger.

Yeah. the movies. Yeah. Right. And so she'll say like, "You're making me angry." And I and I help her understand. I go, "No, you're choosing to be angry. I may have done things that you don't like, but you choose."

And that this is one of those beliefs that you have to take on that you get to choose your thoughts, your attitudes, your response to things. Victor Frankle said, "Between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is your freedom, which is your ability to choose." And in the military, we called this equinimity, right? Right? We didn't use a lot of $10 words in the military, but this was one of them.

Right? Equinimity. Um, meaning it comes from two Latin words meaning even soul or even mind. Right? What that means for the military, what equinimity was is that you don't panic when you're getting shot at. It's a pretty important uh trait, character trait for what I used to do. But what I like to help people understand is that you got to have equinimity. Doesn't matter what you do, doesn't matter where you come from. And there's two pieces to equinimity. One side people see a lot of which is the don't panic when you're getting shot at, right? That's a big deal. Meaning like that you can sustain like great difficulty that you can sustain despair and you that you're always going to be someone who is not a thermometer, right?

Where you tell the temperature where but where you're a thermostat where you determine what the temperature is going to be. Things are going horrible in my life and it's not going to make me act a certain way. That's that's the bottom side. I call it no pity parties literally. Uh, believe it or not, this is a true story, Charles. When I was dating my wife before we were married, um, her father was away working and I was out of town on a training trip and she calls me. She's living in California at the time. She calls me. She's living in California. She's pulled over on the wrong side of the highway in California, which is a dangerous place to be, with a flat tire. And she's crying, right?

Telling me her situation. And I literally I said like very quickly in this conversation and you would think I wouldn't be married to this girl but very quickly in this conversation I said stop crying no amount of tears is going to change that flat tire. I'm going to help you because what I knew was the longer she sat there. Yes. You know what you maybe you are worthy of crying in this situation but crying is a risk to you. And what I cared more about than right like you've got to be able to hurt your business partner's feelings. You got to be able to hurt your spouse's feelings sometimes. Other than that, you don't have a relationship. Relationship is your ability to walk in truth together, right? So, I told I told she wasn't my spouse at the time. I said, "Stop crying. I'm going to help you fix this." Cuz what I cared more about was not seeing my girlfriend, future wife, get run over on the the highway in

California. Right? So, hey, we needed to stop crying because crying is going to impact our safety, is going to impact our livelihood here. But there's the other side of equinimity. the other side of equinimity. Uh Charlie Munger talks about this, the late Charlie Munger, so wise. He talked about to be a great investor, you've got to be able to govern your mindset. You got to be able to govern your relationships that you can sustain despair, but also he said that you can sustain great success because success can can uh influence you and manipulate you the same way that great despair can. And to to be a leader means to like if you're leading yourself, it means you're directing yourself. If success is leading you, if despair is leading you, you're no longer in charge. And so what you've got to be able to do is govern your emotions to have an even mind in any situation and then make decisions. And this sounds

incredibly hard to do, and it is. Uh getting shot at and staying calm is not an easy thing to do, but it starts with believing that you can,

right? So how do you how do you do that? If you're in a situation where you are taking rounds and you're in you're being engaged and you're having that hurdle, how do you sit there and reenter your emotions and say, "Listen, there's a time and a place to be panicked and there's a time and a place to be scared. There's a time and a place to cry. Right now, none of those things are going to get me through this. I'll get to do that later." How do you do that? How do you actively because we've all had road rage. How do you end up doing that? How do you find a way to pivot your

You'll never You'll never uh be ready for that battle if you didn't prepare to be ready for that battle. I cannot show up with you on the battlefield untrained and coach you into survival. It's too late for you, right? You're going to you're going to get whatever happens to you. What you've got to do is begin to prepare for every single one of these situations. The first time I got shot at, I I had been there before. I hadn't actually been there before, but I had been there before cuz they had trained me and prepared me. I had mentally rehearsed when this happens, here's what I'm going to do. Everything in the military came down to like emergency procedures, right? Or EPS as we called them. When this happens, what do you do?

Right? When my parachute malfunctioned, I didn't say like, "Oh my god, I'm going to die." I said, "Okay, I need to release this piece of equipment and deploy the next one."

And so, it's preparation that prepares you for those moments. And so it starts with right I've got to believe that I can that I can govern myself that I can govern my emotions. You won't do that perfectly but you're 100% capable in any situation you're in of governing yourself. And then you begin to train accordingly so that when these moments come because there's two different types of uh men on the battlefield, Charles. There are the men who wish that the battle would never come for them. There's there are people who are hoping that the the dark side of the world never shows up at their door. And then there are the other men that prepare and prepare and prepare, hoping it's never going to come, but they're 100% ready.

And on the day that it does, you're like a 19-year-old Spartan young man. If you great book I love called Gates of Fire. It's historical fiction about the Spartans. Talks about their level of preparation and training. And when a 19-year-old man stands in on the battlefield for the first time, he's drooling because he says, "I've waited my whole life for this moment to come." The moment where many people are pissing themselves, the most scared they've ever been in their life. A person's level of prep preparation brings them to the same moment and says, "I've waited for this.

My time has come." One of the I think they're one of the best examples I've ever seen of anyone regulating their emotions. They're going through it and their toddler actually had a massive breakdown. Screaming, yelling, just because they're toddlers and whatever it is, they're going to go through that. And he went into this mode where he was like, "Okay, I've got two choices. I can be either this type of dad or I can be this type of dad." And he went in and he did what's known as box breathing, which is four in or hold, four and out, four in or it just it's a routine. And he sat there and he got down to the kid's level and he just started breathing in front of the child and the child's freaking like, "Watch me breathe." And then all of a sudden his toddler started doing it and he started regulating and it got the breathing under control. And I've always learned that when I'm having cuz I live in South

Florida. So I think it's a rule when you come into Florida, you tear up your license and you turn into Mad Max down here. It just it is what it is. It's wild. And I used to respond in a very specific way when I was a teenager because I didn't know. And I remember I was outside of this very very nice place and I was talking to the valet and I was like, "What is the one thing about the that would surprise me?" He goes, "The amount of guns that are just sitting on the the the side seats that are just out there when you're driving around." I was like, "Are you serious?" He's like, "Yeah, probably 90% of the cars out here have guns." And I was like, "Okay, I need to approach my emotions now differently. When Susie cuts me off, all of a sudden, I'm not going to go drive home and light her catfish on fire." I'm like, "Okay, I need to start regulating my things." Like, listen, it's it's not really that important. And I've started

to learn how to do these type of breaings when you're doing it. You know, I'm I'm a I'm a scuba diver. So, we learn very quickly how to regulate your breath because sooner or later you're going to see a shark. Sooner or later, you are going to have equipment failure.

And to to your point of of talking about it, we go through that all the time. Before you get certified as a diver, they take your mask away from you. They turn your rag off. They take they take one of your, you know, your flippers away. And as I was working with individuals and we were recording things, they would mess with me all the time. And I thought I was being hazed. I was like, "You bastards." They would swim by and they'd turn my air off slowly when I was doing like jerks or they'd pull my weights or they'd sit there and they they just mess with me the whole time. And I didn't understand why they were doing it. I just thought they were being guys being jerks and they weren't. They were preparing me for that when it did happen and they weren't around because I have a torn labor in my left arm and I was in Galapagos. my arm ripped out of socket and for me that is paralyzing. I cannot there's just I

cannot function when that happens and the only thing I could do is because I'd gone through it so many times I got to relax my breathing and that's the only way you get it back in socket. I relax and it slams in and it sucks. It's not fun. It really hurts. Um but

I know I know you love tools and and tips, right? And so maybe some of the other SEALs you've had on your show uh mentioned this, maybe they didn't, but one of the big tools and tips they teach us is what they call the SEAL big four.

Okay. And you mentioned one of them. Brea breathing is one of them, right? And exactly what you there's if you go hire like a breath coach, they'll teach you like some better breathing. But just like with working out, the best workout is the one that you'll do. Uh with breath work, the best breath work is the breath work that you'll remember, the breath work you can utilize. to what you said the four four in four hold four out four hold that's a 4 secondond box breath that's one of the tools that they teach us right this is tools for extreme difficulty right when you're getting shot at deploy these deploy these four tools and they actually taught them to us at the beginning of SEAL training they they want you to have this like they're not trying to hold you back I practice all of these things through buds right it helps you get through those moments so breath work is one of them another one is visualization right

similar to what uh what I talked about with my own visualization of of completing hell week. You can do that in like a midterm. You can do it in like a way long term. You can also do it in like a short term, right? Like you're angry and you got to step into a meeting. Visualize yourself performing correctly. Having the right attitude and that'll help you step into that attitude. So visualization is one of them. Uh segmentation is another one. So we've we've talked about breath work, we've talked about visualization, segmentation is a third one. And that's breaking it down into uh bite-sized chunks. Like the saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Well, first you have to kill an elephant, which is not a small undertaking. But after you complete that task, to eat an elephant, you do it one bite at a time. Or as Mark Twain said, uh if you have to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning. If you have to eat two frogs, eat the biggest one first. Right? And so, but you have to make it take big stuff, break it down into meaningful pieces. In SEAL training, it wasn't like, "Oh man, I gotta finish today or only one more week or no, it was, "Hey, I'm gonna make it to breakfast." Right? Because they've beat so much out of you by 5:00 am.

You're just like, "Say, man, if I can just make it to breakfast, that'll be a good milestone for today." And then the last one is selft talk.

Two of these four specifically have a biological physiological impact on you. Breath work is one of them. Selft talk is the other. Um, you probably are familiar and your audience is probably somewhat familiar with amygdala hijack, right? When you start experiencing fear, you go into the weakest, smallest survival portion of your brain. You cannot think clearly. You cannot process logic. Uh, small motor function goes away. Shortness of breath. And this is all you do is see red or see fear. And there's two ways to get yourself out of amydala hijack. Number one is intentional breathing. And the other is selft talk.

Mhm. And so with I know you probably talk a lot about selft talk with with your audience and I know you you teach and train on it but the really the big piece is that it's intentional versus passive not listening and and really like my uh my podcast co-host Nick who does the impossible life with me uh one of the first things that like he he he finds me peculiar and so he finds interesting things about me and one of the things that he thought was so interesting so if you're around me you'll hear me talk to myself

all right like in third person sometimes I will talk to myself because as as much as selft talk works I've found it's even better when you verbalize it.

Yes. Right. Because you're actually hearing it twice. When you talk out externally you hear it it's going to rattle inside your head and then it's going to come back through your ears. You're actually hearing and we've scientifically proven this. You're going to hear it twice.

As a man speaks so is he right? And so the the four things like four tools to address like any difficult circumstance you're in. So breath work right? We got that visualization. You got to see it. Create a picture in your mind, segmentation, break it down into small pieces and then selft talk start talking to yourself and start saying the right things.

Gotcha. It's funny because as you were going through that because we all have this selft talk going on our heads all the time. We have different versions of ourselves. We have a version of ourselves that doesn't think we're enough. We have a version of ourselves that's worried. We have all of that. And being able to listen to it is important. And I've talked about this for years cuz you went through like, "Hey, there's these four things that you talk about." And there's a version of me that popped up. They're like, "Okay, the four things that Seals talk about is like cookies, ice cream, chocolate cake." And I was like, "No, shut up." So, you'll have those things and those that'll come in.

You get to have those conversations because where that one was a humor one, we'll have that in a negative way, a negative loop as well. They'll sit there and say, "Oh, well, you shouldn't be here. You're not enough. You're going to fail." Da da da. Those will still come up. And the same way I laughed away the cookies, ice cream, cupcakes, whatever it is, whatever. You have to be able to pivot that and choose what you listen to as well because there's multiple voices that people have in their heads because it's different versions of you and they're all designed for the same thing.

It's all the the lizard brain trying to keep you a lot and what you say out loud over and over and what you reinforce allows you to get there and and allows you to do that.

There's a duality there's a duality within us in a lot of the natures that we have. And um the way I kind of see it is the one that's going to lead the most is the one that you feed the most. Right?

You know the rest of that story by the way rest of that famous story. So spur of the wolves for those who guys aren't playing at home. I'll catch everybody up. There's a there's a story about the two wolves that the grandfather is sitting with his granddaughter and he says, "Oh,

yeah, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Um, I'm just going to get the audience caught up. So, they sit there and says, you know, you know, there's a war inside you. There's these two wolves and they're battling for your existence. One is the one of doubt and fear and hatred and violence and the other one is the one of hope, joy, love, and and all that. And the little girl says, "Well, which one to a grandfather, you know, grandpa, which one wins?" And the thing that most people think is it's the one you feed. It is not the true original story that it was done by in the 1940s 19 late 30s to late 40s. Uh it was done by a pastor. He that was the ending he did. The original story comes from indigenous people, Native Americans.

That it goes she goes, "Well, which one do you feed?" He goes, "Both. You need them all. You need to be able to hear this one of doubt and pain because that will tell you what's happening. And then you need these other versions of you to come in and get there." So, we need to listen to it all. And it teaches you how to balance the yin and the yang to listen to those and to be part of that process.

I would agree with that almost entirely, but I would say there's probably some wolves in us that need to be starved. There might be some nature's

contained. I would say contained. Yeah. Cuz there's some versions of us that again back to when I'm driving, you know, there was a video game that I'm not allowed to play anymore because I get I have an addictive personality to nothing in my life except video games. It's the only thing that I have, so I'm just not allowed to play them. But I would play GTA 6 5 GTA 5. 6 hasn't come out yet. And people like, why are you playing this? I was like, I can skydive into a military base and fly a plane. Why wouldn't I play that? But when I was driving, I would sit there and in the game, you it's a you drive around and you can do all these things. But someone would cut me off in the game and I would get out of the car and I, you know, fire an RPG at them or, you know, cap and blow them up because I was like, "Oh, you cut me off in the game." Because it's it's it's NPCs. are not real people. Giving that version of me an

outlet to say, "Okay, you can contain here. You can have that, but I'm going to go to the supermarket." And I remember one time I'd been playing for way too long and I spun my tires coming out of the garage in my actual house because that's how I normally drive in the game. Soon as that happened, I had the discipline enough to turn the car off. I was like, "I'm done. I'm going back inside. I'm having delivery, dudes. I don't get to do this." So finding a way to feed it because whatever you whatever you repress, it will come out sooner or later. Like it or not, you're going to have your willpower, you're going to do something, be it alcohol or whatever, it's coming out. So having a place that you can contain it and release that so important. So important.

So but we don't allow it to do certain things on the on the nature of alcohol really just like with of the duality within us. I think within most people there's a voice of you that like you know would wants to consume alcohol sees the joy in alcohol and there might be another voice in you that says like hey man this isn't good for us we don't need this

and the more you lean into one the the voice changes in the other right if you lean into the voice that says hey you don't need alcohol um it does nothing for you you'll begin to hear the other voice that's screaming saying what do you mean we could never have this again

right and that's a different convers And it's the conversation that that I found that works really well is like, okay, who do you want to be?

Yeah, that's what that's what I was getting at. Yeah. Yeah. Who do you want who are you trying to become? And what are you ultimately trying to achieve? Will this help you? And you have a choice. Absolutely. Here it is. Here is because for me, I'm allergic to alcohol. I take three sips of it. It comes right back out. It's a gift from my grandmother. I just it views it as sour milk. That's how my body views it. But sugar. So I sit down and I have, you know, a canoli or whatever is in front of me. I'm like, "Okay, does this serve who I want to be and the life I want to live?"

And the answer norm to that is no. Like, oh man. And then it's like, to your point, can I never have this again? You can have it. We just have to decide if this makes sense. Do we eat three canoli? Do we have a canoli? Do we have it four times a week? Do we have it once a month? It's a different conversation. You've talked about selfmastery on a high level. I'd love to have your conversations about how to motivate and how to lead and how to connect with other individuals who haven't gone through these evolutions, right? There's a there's a large group of the population who've never done this work.

This is for a lot of people even this podcast and how your podcast, you know, it's it's very new to them. They're like, I've never done this. I've always done this through brute force or relied on raw talent or been the smartest person in the room and that was easy. Which again, the the comment that we have all the time of if you're the smartest person in the room, get the hell out of that room. You're in the wrong room. So as you're leading and you go into this environment and you have to lead individuals who maybe aren't operating at their best or haven't gone through and haven't done the visualization and the selfwork and the self-t talk, how do you motivate them and connect with them and and how have you learned how to do that in an effective manner?

Uh so how how do I motivate and lead people? Help give me uh clarify the question for me.

So you're in charge of a team. You get assigned to it. You're brought into a company very similar to I am. you're there to scale them, to help them out, to reach whatever their goal is. Normally, when I'm brought in an organization, they're like, "Hey, we're making seven figures. How do we get to eight?" And I'm like, "All right, well, I I need to see who your team was and how they work with each other." And then people who I know nothing about their industry. I have to get them to completely pivot their systems and their operations, fall behind a different way of doing it that is just proven. It is what it is. You just walk through the process.

Getting them to pivot. There's very specific things I do in that process. when you come into those environments and you're teaching places like Oracle, it's like, hey, this is how you lead. This is how you, you know, you motivate men or women teams, how do you do that?

So, I'll start with uh some quotes that kind of frame my parameter on leadership. John Maxwell says leadership is influence. Eisenhower said that leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it and they want to do it. Right? And that's really the hard part of leadership is to get them to want to do it. Right? So to be a great leader, you need to be someone who's very followable. Leadership is not just about authority. Um history has shown us that regardless of title and station, your authority can be taken away from you if you're not a worthy leader. Um and so what so what instead what you got to think is how do I be someone that people would want to listen to, that people would want to follow? And I think you can drill it down to two basic uh qualities. Number one is strength.

Strength is I can do what I say. If I say I can open this door, I can open it. If I say we're going to I can climb this mountain, I can climb it. I've proven to you that I can do what I say, that I'm capable, that I have ability. That's one quality. The other side of that, and this is where again I like talking about the duality because I think there's so many natures within us that you have to learn how to work with both of them, right? You have the strength, but then the other side of that is warmth. And warmth is that the people on your team believe that you care about them.

Because it doesn't matter how capable someone is, if they don't if you don't think that they have your best interest in mind. If you have a few people in your life that you truly believe have 100% your best interest in mind, you you are blessed and living in a wonderful life because most people don't have that. But as a leader, if you can demonstrate those two qualities that like, hey, I'm capable. I can do this. I can fix problems and I care about you. That's where people will follow you. The other way like care is such a great uh and important piece of leadership. The other way that you can demonstrate care if it's not specifically about your people is care for the mission, right?

And and so there's multiple ways to come across in that. But you have to have strength and warmth if you want to get people to follow you.

There's there's a lot of people who will follow us in our lives. and you talked about having certain people in our lives that give you blessings and that if you have enough of this, you are one of the bless most blessed individuals in the world. There are people behind you um who are no longer with us and I'd love to be able to kind of speak about them and share their story because these are some of the most blessed individuals that you had the opportunity to meet and who have given more than any of us will ever understand the sacrifice they give.

So I, you know, you talked about one of the individuals early on. Yeah. I'll just mention uh I'll mention Charles. Um won't won't go into all of them, but I will talk about Charles. Charlie Keading again died May 3rd uh 2016. He was uh someone that to me was a great leader. So much of what I learned about leadership. I learned from people who weren't great leaders, but also learned from some incredible leaders. And Charlie was someone who was a a gener, you know, a phase ahead of me in his time and in his leadership in the SEAL teams that took time to speak into me that demonstrated what excellence uh looked like. Yeah. Charlie Kading uh was he was a leader in my own life and it was it was very hard in me if if you look him up, you'll see it was very hard in the entire community when he passed because of the man that he was. But served at Seal Team 3, died in uh Operation Enduring Freedom May 3rd,

2016. Can you can you remember one thing that Charlie told you that first, you know, really inspired you and then maybe also made you laugh so hard water came out of your nose?

Um, I would say one of the quality I not something that he said, it was more so the qualities that he lived with. And Charlie was a guy that always had a smile on his face. Like I said earlier, died with a smile on his face. And even when I watched things in his life not go the way that he wanted them to, when he was disciplining me, when he was just being an instructor, he always had a smile on his face. He was a guy that had a love for life, but also had like a huge dedication to the mission, which I think is as a leader, that's one of those qualities that it makes you want to follow. It's one of the magical qualities I would say of leadership that makes you want to follow people cuz it seems like life isn't such a burden to them. You mentioned that he he was an instructor to you. Can you remember outside of always having a smile, one of the lessons that he'd shared with you or that you really just like, "Wow, that

that really resonates still to this day." Uh, one of the biggest lessons I learned from from Charlie was how to follow uh leader leadership and follow instruction that was really poor. Um, he you know, my my team went through a transition. Charlie was in a team next to me, right? I didn't get along well with some of the people in my team, but he was someone that I looked up to. And I had people in my life that that would tell me, "Find the people you admire and do what they do." And Charlie was one of those people. I I a lot of things that he would do, the time that he got there, what he did with his time, I learned a bunch of those things from him. But I'd say one of the best qualities that he taught me was when when you when you're following a leader who's not a great leader, it's not about their level of leadership. It's how well that you guys can all row together for their level of leadership. My first leader in the

military was not really a great leader, but all of my platoon said, "Hey, we're going to row as hard as we can for this mission, and it doesn't matter how great their leadership is if we all row together." It was, uh, Patton who said, um, strategy and tactics, right? Strategy is knowing what to do. Tactics is knowing how to do it, right? Strategy is take the hill. Tactics is like the techniques that you're going to use to take the hill. And and Patton who was known as one of the greatest strategists, he said good tactics can save the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy the best strategy. So here he is the greatest strategist of all time or one of the greatest battlefield strategists saying it's not about how good my plans are, it's about how good your level of execution is. And Charlie taught that to me.

So one of the there's a lot we could go on and I I know if I don't put a cap on it, we're going to talk for another two hours like we did the first time, which was a lot of fun. Um, how do people find you? How do people reach out? They were going to want to know more. They're going to want to learn how to do what you've done and to have some of the success you've had. You know, you you're one of the few that I get to it was a no-brainer to have you come on. I was like, "No, he's proven it. This is an individual who's proven this time and time again of his success. How do people track you down? How do people get a hold of you? What's the best way?"

Uh, best place to find me if you want to hear more is the Impossible Life podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to podcast, whatever platform. I promise we're on there. So, the impossible life. Uh you can find me there. You can find me on Instagram, Garrett Uncle. I put a lot of my like individual message and content out there. Uh you can also reach me if you want to shoot me an email. Would love to hear from you. You can hit me up at coach@garedunclebach.com.

Man, Garrett, I really appreciate it. Thank you so very much for taking the time out and also for sharing the story of Charlie with us.

Charles, thank you so much for having me. honor and a privilege. Garrett proved that the hardest battles aren't fought with weapons. They're won by mastering yourself first. When you align your actions with purpose bigger than yourself, when you choose your response instead of letting circumstances choose for you, that's when you become truly unstoppable.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Navy SEAL Mind Techniques That Work - Garrett Unclebach"?

In order: 0:00 Navy SEAL, Chris Voss, Garrett Uncle, Hell Week; 10:00 Hell Week, Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Scripture, Coronado; 20:00 Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Hell Week; 30:00 Hell Week, Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Coronado, Frisco, Texas; 40:00 Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Box breathing, Gates of Fire, Inside Out; 50:00 visualization, Segmentation, Amygdala hijack, General Dwight D. Eisenhower; 1:00:00 Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Garrett Uncle, George S. Patton, Operation Enduring Freedom.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

47 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jeffrey 71st – Miller, Charles, Hell Week, Navy SEAL, visualization, Garrett Uncle, Coronado. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Navy SEAL Mind Techniques That Work - Garrett Unclebach"?

The episode runs 1 h 7 min; the transcript is about 15,577 words in 156 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.